


Pain That's Halved

by spoowriterfic



Series: Beyond the Darkness Waits the Dawn [2]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 02:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19758418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoowriterfic/pseuds/spoowriterfic
Summary: Set a few weeks after "Pain That's Shared," Nicole is still...not dealing well...with the events of the season 3 finale. This time, instead of Wynonna, it's Waverly who has a chance to help.





	Pain That's Halved

**Author's Note:**

> I don't expect there to be any more in this series, as I really think the only people Nicole would allow herself to be this vulnerable with are Wynonna and Waverly (though now as I type that, I suppose Nedley is a possibility too), but who knows?
> 
> By the way, I know I've been really bad at responding to comments lately, but please know I love reading them and appreciate every single one. So here's a blanket "thank you!" to everyone, and I'll try to be better.

Waverly and Doc had been back from the Garden for twenty-two days and sixteen hours when Nicole’s nightmare dragged Waverly from a deep sleep just before dawn. She was writhing on the bed, hands clenched in the sheet and face contorted in agony.

The weight of that pain slammed onto Waverly’s shoulders like a physical blow.

She had by necessity grown accustomed to Nicole’s massacre nightmares, which had grown both more frequent and more intense in the months between Wynonna shooting the Widows and the confrontation with Bulshar at the entrance to the Garden, but these were new and they clearly took more out of Nicole each time than the massacre dreams ever had. She no longer woke gasping and drenched in sweat as though she’d been fighting or running in terror; instead, she woke with a muffled sob and a distant, remembered agony in her eyes. And more often than not, it took her hours to really seem herself afterwards.

Waverly sighed and began to stroke Nicole’s hair, humming under her breath: _Oh, I love you, love you, love you more each year / They could strip away the cheer; I’d still be standing here…_

Waking her up suddenly didn’t help at all – she’d almost always fall right back to sleep and into the grip of another nightmare (or perhaps the same one, but since she refused to talk about them, Waverly wasn’t certain) – but sometimes easing her gently into wakefulness seemed to reset her brain and would allow her to get some more rest – or at least start her day without that haunted distance in her eyes.

This time, Nicole’s eyes fluttered open almost immediately and her hand came up to brush shaking fingers across Waverly’s jawline before she could stop herself. She exhaled slowly and wordlessly pulled Waverly close, burying her face in Waverly’s hair with a shuddering breath.

Waverly held her silently until the tension slowly leeched out of Nicole’s body, then peppered butterfly kisses over her face. Nicole sighed and relaxed somewhat, but the shadows lingered in her eyes, which roamed desperately all over Waverly’s face.

Making sure she was really there.

Well.

If she’d learned anything from Wynonna, it was that sometimes a good – or bad — joke was a damn good palate cleanser.

“So I think I’ve waited long enough,” she said briskly. “Explain the butt tattoo jokes.”

It worked – as well as anything did these days, at least.

Nicole chuckled reluctantly; the shadows in her eyes mostly receded back to wherever she kept that pain bottled up inside.

“Because I’m used to most of Wynonna’s nonsense but that’s a new one. And I know for darn sure that you don’t have a tattoo of any kind.” Nicole sighed, but Waverly wasn’t about to let her sink back into her nightmare. “Spill it.”

“Okay…so after Wynonna locked you in the tool chest, she came back and found me and explained the whole…Garden…thing — ”

That knocked Waverly back a bit. She knew not being in on their plans was a justified sore spot of Nicole’s and found herself interrupting to stammer an apology: “I…I’m…sorry…about that. I just…I couldn’t…I didn’t know how to tell you something that awful. Dolls said something like that to me just before he died and I didn’t understand it then, but that’s…how do you tell someone you love something you know will break their heart?” She stumbled to a halt. “Sorry. Go on. We can go back to my sorry speech later.”

This time it was Nicole pressing a gentle, reassuring kiss to Waverly’s temple before she said, “I get it, Waves. I don’t…I don’t _like_ it, but I get it. Besides, I don’t really have a leg to stand on, do I?” Because she’d faced a similar dilemma, though with far less world-altering consequences, when she’d held an envelope and put it into her purse instead of Waverly’s hands because she was sure the truth would break Waverly’s heart. “Anyway, she explained about Kevin, and the Garden, and all of that, and asked me to get you out of the Ghost River Triangle until the whole thing went down.”

“And you said no,” Waverly said with quiet, loving confidence.

Nicole shrugged uneasily. “I wanted to. God, I wanted to. And after…I wished every _second_ you were gone that I had. But I’m the _sheriff_. I have a responsibility to – ”

“Of course you do. You did the right thing, sweetie.”

Nicole bit her lip. “I did?”

Waverly took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Of course you did. You always do the right thing. No matter what. Even if it’s not the best thing for _you_.” She smiled. “It’s one of the best things about you.”

A little more of the tension leeched out of Nicole’s shoulders. “Anyway, I told Wynonna the other problem is that you’d just talk me out of it anyway. I mean, I’d do anything for you.” Waverly couldn’t help but smile at that; Nicole was always so matter-of-fact about her devotion but sometimes it still took her by surprise. “So she — ”

“Asked if you’d get a tattoo for me,” Waverly said with a fond smile. “Would you?”

Nicole swallowed hard. “Do you really have to ask that?”

“No. And I love you for it.” Nicole smiled wistfully. “But don’t worry: I won’t.”

“Anyway, it’s now Wynonna’s…well, not short-hand, but…Wynonna-speak for how much I love you.”

Waverly stroked Nicole’s hair; despite her words, she was still too quiet and too reserved, shadows and remembered pain obvious in her eyes. After a few minutes, Waverly sighed. “I wish the ring could heal you here,” she said, scratching Nicole’s scalp before trailing the fingers of her other hand over Nicole’s side where she’d been stabbed, “the way it healed you here.”

Nicole shrugged, a little fatalistically. “You can’t – there’s nothing…it’s…it’s…. The more I love you, the worse the thought of losing you is. And I love you a little more everyday, so….” Waverly sighed at that; it made a sad kind of sense. “You know…I get now why you made that deal with Gretta. Because I would do anything… _anything_ , Waves…to keep from losing you again.”

“You won’t,” Waverly said, pressing her lips against Nicole’s temple. “I promise you won’t.”

“But you can’t. Neither of us can. This is _Purgatory_ , for God’s sake. I almost had to marry a garden gnome! And that’s the least dangerous thing that happened to me all year!”

“We’ll find a way. We’ll always find a way.”

Nicole shook her head, rare tears and Dolls’s ghost in her eyes. “Not always.”

“But – ”

“We’re mortal, baby, unless you know something I don’t. Someday….”

Waverly’s heart sank. “You think I’d let something as trivial as death keep me from you?”

“Well, but – ”

“Nope. Earps don’t give up. Somehow, some way…no matter what, you’re stuck with me.” She shook her head, her eyes drifting to the side, looking at something Nicole couldn’t see before she looked back and made eye contact again. “I’ve lost enough people I love already. And I love you, Nicole. I’m not letting you go. _Ever_. Sometimes you have to have faith. Have faith in me?”

“I love you too. Always. Forever. It’s just – the thought of losing you…. It was like the world ended. Like falling off a cliff.”

A chill crept up Waverly’s spine. “What did you say? A _cliff_?”

_“If it’s right, you don’t think about the cliff because you’re sure when you reach the edge you’ll fly.”_

“Oh,” Waverly whispered before Nicole could answer her. She looked up and into brown eyes that swallowed her whole, and suddenly she _remembered_. “ _Oh_ ,” she said again.

_“I betrayed her…because I love you.”_

“Baby?”

_Brown eyes. Brown eyes that, she thought, she could look into forever, as Nicole held her own heart in her hand and offered it to Waverly without a second thought. “Where you go, I go.”_

“I…” Waverly said, “…I just remembered…in that other world. Right before we blew up the barn. You said, ‘Where you go, I go.’”

“I did?”

Somehow, everything settled. They would be together. No matter what life threw at them, they would _be together_. “Nicole Rayleigh Haught,” Waverly said, her voice loving but very firm. “You listen to me, okay? Where you go, I go. Nothing’s ever gonna split us up again. I promise.”

For the second time since Waverly came back from the Garden, Nicole broke. Huge, silent tears spilled down her cheeks for a moment before she grabbed Waverly in a tight hug and buried her face in Waverly’s shoulder and cried.

Some time later, once she’d stopped crying and her breathing had evened out, she pulled back to look at Waverly. Again, one shaking hand came up to brush her fingers across Waverly’s cheek, down her jawline, and then back up to tuck her hair behind her ears. “Thank you,” she choked out. “Waverly…thank you. For surviving. For coming back to me.”

“Thank you for waiting for me,” Waverly said.

“I’d wait forever for you,” Nicole said. “But….” Her lips twitched in a little smile, though her eyes were still tinged with sadness around the edges. “Please try not to make me, okay?”

Waverly smiled. “You got a deal, baby.”

**Author's Note:**

> Aside from the entirety of the alternate universe really driving home the whole "soulmates" thing, Nicole saying "Where you go, I go" is when I became completely unable to keep my brain from associating Waverly and Nicole with Missy Good's soulmates series (and her two uber, or what we'd now call "modern AU" series), since that's a through-line between all of her incarnations of Xena and Gabrielle. I *think* the line about not letting something "as trivial as death" is cribbed from one of her stories that I've read so much it's sunk into my brain, but I'm not sure. Take it as another homage if it is (or even if it isn't). 
> 
> As with the first story in this series, title of this story comes from a Mercedes Lackey filk song called "Promise": 
> 
> "Beyond the darkness waits the dawn and after night, the day;  
> And whether you believe or not, it follows anyway.  
> When hope is spent and strength is gone, and choices none or few,  
> There still are friends to turn to who will give you hope anew.
> 
> Beyond all heartaches comes heart's ease, I swear that this is true;  
> And if you put your trust in me, I'll share your pain with you.  
> I'll drink the cup down to the lee, though bitter it may be,  
> For pain that's shared is pain that's halved, so share your pain with me."


End file.
